Melanie

Teaching machines to help people.

[Melanie @melg]

@anumness I was taught in third grade that 0/0=0. My dad sent me to school the next day with various graphs of X/X as X approaches 0. It didn't really help the teacher but I both learned about limits and felt really embarrassed.

[Melanie @melg]

Happened to run into a Doppelmayr employee on the way home. Said this happened 4 times yesterday - common in the rain - it's about debris getting into the currency collector so it isn't safe to open the doors, but that it's easy to fix and so should always work the next round.

[Melanie @melg]

Took the @SFBART from Coliseum to Oakland airport, which is a fully automated train. Doors didn't open at OAK. Now heading back to Coliseum. Hope I make my flight and am not stuck on this train going back and forth forever.

[Melanie @melg]

Annnnd it worked fine at every other stop. Second time was the charm.

[Melanie @melg]

@uncatherio I am now really curious what the ratio to the gender reversed question is.

[Melanie @melg]

I got my family 23andme tests for the holidays one year. I didn't think deeply about it and thought it would be fun. My mom was surprised but said - if you trust this, I trust you.

I threw out the tests instead.

Feeling really good about that right now.

[Will Manidis @WillManidis]

within months you will be able to buy genomics data from 14 million americans for +/- $200m?

the inevitable fire sale of this mess to an overseas PE firm is going to be a national security matter on the scale of which we haven't seen in healthcare in years

[Melanie @melg]

@venturetwins My 3rd grade teacher taught me that 0/0=0. My dad printed me out various graphs of x/x as x goes to 0. It wasn't helpful to the teacher. I learned a helpful if socially akward lesson that teachers can be wrong.

[Melanie @melg]

@kerobinso While we are on linguistics, the thread has no sense of pragmatics as a full discipline, Gricean reasoning, etc. What I see tripping people up in the pure semantic read is them going one level deeper into trying to understand the reasoning behind asking the question.

[Melanie @melg]

@dmvaldman Heads-down doing work instead of going to meetups

[Melanie @melg]

@__apf__ I love SCENE FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES ONLY too

[Melanie @melg]

@emily_wherever An amazing thing about Oakland recycling is that they have a 'recycling hotline' staffed by an actual human for your random recycling questions: https://t.co/75MFDg3njU

[Melanie @melg]

@kerobinso I love it if it has personality. I would rather have nothing if it's the sort of repeating playlist of 10 songs that's a worker's rights issue.

[Melanie @melg]

@uberpreeya I mostly use Twitter for this as well but I don't hate Google News / Apple News / NPR News. Obviously the framings are very mainstream but what I'm looking for there is a summary of mainstream news. I find them better than the major journalist news sites, at least.

[California HCD @California_HCD]

📢Congratulations City of @Oakland!

Today #TeamHCD #HousingAccountabilityUnit found Oakland’s housing element in compliance.

The collaboration and thoughtfulness in this plan set the stage for meeting the projected housing needs of over 25,000 homes. 🧵

[Melanie @melg]

Quote from the Tilden Fungus Fair: "You shouldn't be afraid of cordyceps. You should be afraid of yeast."

[City of Oakland @Oakland]

Adopt a Dog this Weekend to Ease Overcrowding at the Shelter

@oaklandsanimals will extend hours Jan 12-16, waive adoption fees, and expedite the adoption process with the goal of finding homes for 50 big dogs by the 16th. https://t.co/O7HbkAR5Rh

[Melanie @melg]

Weird cognitive dissonance going from watching She Said last night (excellent movie but definitely not a fun romp) and then seeing Lisa Bloom (who defended Harvey Weinstein) prominently defending Twitter alumni here today.

[Melanie @melg]

@pdrmnvd It's weird that in this context 'data team' only applies to using data to make better decisions. It's very easy to measure the value of data in an app context, e.g. improving your product with ML. Data teams that just do analyses are missing out.

[Melanie @melg]

I know Pizzatate is an amazing story of justice we all want to be true, but despite that, it isn't true. https://t.co/fborAdROGp